Madea Goes To Mobile: 'Big Happy Family' thrills the crowd

View full size(AP Photo/Peter Kramer, file)Tyler Perry brought "Madea's Big Happy Family" to the Mobile Civic Center for two shows Sunday.MOBILE, Ala. -- The mythical “fourth wall” of drama, the one that separates actors from audience, rarely gets shredded as thoroughly or as joyfully as it did Sunday in the Mobile Civic Center arena.

The occasion was the first of two presentations of “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” starring playwright/actor/director Tyler Perry as the straight-talking, gun-toting matriarch of the title.

Perry’s plays can draw thousands when he’s not in the cast. When he’s in town and in character, things go to another level.

And so, when Madea made her appearance about 12 minutes into the first act of the early show, there was no helping it. Perry was getting a superstar reception, and he had to address it.

“I know you ain’t got no camera. You recording, ain’t you?” Madea challenged, pulling a handgun out of her purse and pointing at someone in the crowd.

Perry, now only nominally in character, spent a few relaxed minutes, teasing latecomers. “I don’t know why y’all can’t get nowhere on time,” he said. “Three o’clock is three o’clock.”

A few more cracks, and it was on to business.

“Madea’s Big Happy Family” has a fairly simple dramatic arc. In the first act, it’s established that Shirley has terminal cancer. Furthermore, it’s made clear that her family — five children and various other kinfolk — have so many issues that they can’t stop squabbling long enough for her to give them the news.

As all this is laid out, Madea merely provides some tart-tongued comic relief. Then in the second act, she falls upon the miscreants like a hawk on a pile of frightened rabbits, dispensing moral lessons with a righteous force (and sometimes physical force) that brooks no interruption.

In theory, it’s pretty straightforward. In practice, at least at Sunday’s early show, Perry built up such a head of steam that the act’s dramatic structure blew apart like a matchstick dollhouse.

One minute he was fully in character, delivering a lecture on the need for young folks to take responsibility for the children they brought into the world, to cast away an easy-money mentality and to learn the value of hard work.

The next he was sort of in character, lecturing to middle-aged men and women about the difficulty of keeping marriages together.

And in the next, he finally gave up the pretense — “And Mobile, as long as I’m ad-libbin’ and off the script...” — and it was just one of the most successful black men in America, standing on stage in a wig and a dress, preaching about the destructive folly of interest-only mortgages.

As chaotic as all that sounds, it was the best part of the show.

It can be hard figuring out where Madea stops and Perry starts. But judging from the crowd’s reaction, most onlookers had come hoping to see both and were absolutely thrilled to get a full measure of each.